The way that this question is often framed is about the cost, efficiency and importantly, ownership of the sales channel (and data) for an enterprise. In other words, should my internal IT function build this, or should I buy a B2B product off the shelf (or simply list it on an existing marketplace)?
I’m going to suggest that you should be thinking very differently about this question. This is not a question of IT or software, efficiency or ownership.
You should be classifying the question in more broad terms, thinking about the maturity of your enterprise eco-system and, importantly, how this maps against your competitors, but also your strategic vision about addressing and maintaining opportunity as well as value in your sector.
Digital increases granularity and frequency of transactions.
By moving your sales to a digital self-service, automated model, what you should find, if it’s done right, is that your customers move to buy smaller quantities more frequently. In doing so, buyers are able to reduce their exposure, lower their working capital needs and free up physical storage (if applicable).
Processing, settling and fulfilment of orders, in whatever form, obviously requires operational workflows. If your eco-system which supports this process contains friction, then it stands to reason that the increased number of orders for lower quantities/values, is going to exaggerate pinch points in your workflow.
Hot Path, eroding value
This “hot path” within your organisation, the touchpoints and friction from translating an order into a completed transaction, is where, perhaps, you should start the process of thinking about Building or Buying.
Innovation in the enterprise eco-system (an overused term), delivered though largely cloud-based technologies, have targeted individual frictions. From logistics, settlement, KYC, service desk, and practical all other business functions now have a solution that, if chosen and set up correctly, can optimise your business workflow.
If there’s one learning to take from enterprise IT, it’s that it’s highly complex, very dependant and likely costly and slow to change. Demands on each function require specific solutions, and history has baked in a variety of these against each application which is responsible for marshalling your processes.
With this in mind adopting and changing parts of your eco-system to support a transition to a digital channel might not be as obvious as each new cloud-based vendor might suggest. Furthermore the “most important” or rather the most “acute pain” in your supporting workflow might not be obvious at first blush.
Common practice these days is to use an MVP mindset to think about rolling out value quickly and focusing on core business functionality to support change. (MVP doesn’t always work as an ethos… I’ve never seen a would-be wife agreeing to an MVP wedding…).
Plop and Play
Whether it’s MVP or POC, you’re aiming at, using a “plop and play” B2B marketplace channel might be the best approach. Rather than thinking of the strategic objectives, and planning long term, take a short term, tactical view, test what happens without a commitment so you can frame the problems which need solving for a more strategic or long term approach.
In other words, to work out if the build option or the buy option is going to be the most appropriate long term strategy, you should first execute a “trial”. Not only does this uncover those pain points or opportunities, but it also allows you to interact and be driven by your end-users.
There are occasions where a well-designed system isn’t solving the pain points for your customer or end-user and are too internally focussed. Taking it a step further, you may have a disconnect between your perception of what an end-user needs and the implemented approach.
“Plop and play” will deliver the signals you need to refine your internal strategy and how to create external adoption by delivering customer value.
This sounds simple or highly simplified, and it’s time to acknowledge that it’s never as easy as I just made it sound. To extract this particular elephant from the room, you should be considering how to frame up the MVP or POC. The key to this is selecting some sub-set of your products, services or offering to participate in the test drive; not only will this assist in removing obstacles, it will shorten the feedback loop between you and your customer as the experience will be targeted.
Nothing is successful without a prior understanding of what success looks like; KPI’s should be put in place to measure success, making sure you capture objective feedback to combine with your subjective customer messaging.
Conclusion
Once you’re MVP/POC/BETA is complete, the value being delivered, the key features needed to leverage a digital strategy should be obvious and the ability to make a long term decision about the implementation approach will present itself succinctly.
To close out this post, I’d like to mention Data Strategy. It’s a contributory factor in the decision-making process. A good Data Strategy looks at your currently available Data, the intelligence you can garner from it, but more meaningfully, it will include what Data you need to capture in the future to feed a Data-Driven Agenda. Clearly worthy of another follow-up post.
